FEATURES / CONTAINS

CAUTIONS

TAGS

TARGET AUDIENCE

Adult

PERFORMANCE GROUP

College Theatre / Student, Community Theatre, Professional Theatre

Embittered by the revelations of the true character of his father and mother, young, impressionable Reuben Light undergoes a transformation from a God-fearing youth to a cynical atheist. Mystically attracted to a humming dynamo at the plant where he is employed, Reuben begins to worship this man-made idol as the mother of the universe, offering his sweetheart, simpleminded Ada, as a blood sacrifice in atonement for his sins of lust and dying himself in a last fatal embrace with the monstrous machine.

First performed in March 1929.

Characters

CASTING

5m, 3f

Rental Materials

MUSICAL STYLE

N/A (Not a musical)

VOCAL DEMANDS

When Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953) began writing for the stage early in the 20th century, the American theatre was dominated by vaudeville and romantic melodramas. Influenced by Strindberg, Ibsen, and other European playwrights, O’Neill vowed to create a theatre in America, stripped of false sentimentality, which would explore the deepest stirrings of the human spirit. In 1914, he wrote: “I want to ... view full profile